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Sunday, September 20
Bomb of the Week: Jennifer's Body appeared to have a lot going for it: a big marketing push, a strong concept and script (by Juno darling Diablo Cody), and Hollywood's hottest actress (Megan Fox) in the lead. Yet reviews were mixed at best and it averaged just $2500/screen compared with Meatballs' nearly $10K.
Posted 9/20/2009 by reelz
Related: Megan Fox | Jennifer's Body | Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
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Wednesday, September 16
Despite a strong premise, Megan Fox, and a screenplay by Juno darling Diablo Cody, it appears Jennifer's Body is more than a little bit of a letdown.
"Jennifer's Body represents a cornucopia of ideas, both comedy and horror, and the determination of the filmmakers to simply play the odds of getting more elements right than wrong instead of pursuing a purer vision makes it a mixed viewing experience, though often a very strange and funny one."
— Ryan Stewart, Slant Magazine
"An unoriginal and mostly unscary horror-comedy from, surprisingly, the pen of Diablo Cody."
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
"A premeditated cult classic..."
— Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice
"...this high school horror romp tackles its bad-girl-gone-really-bad premise with eye-rolling obviousness and, fatally, a near-total absence of real scares."
— Justin Chang, Variety
Posted 9/16/2009 by reelz
Related: Megan Fox | Jennifer's Body | Diablo Cody
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Tuesday, September 15
With Jennifer's Body headed into theaters this Friday, the studio has released a huge new batch of clips highlighting ... the dialogue. An unusual choice for a horror flick, but in this case not so surprising because the script was written by Diablo Cody, the pen behind Juno.
The clips don't disappoint. We start off with a longer look at the botched sacrifice that made Jennifer (Megan Fox) the demon she is for the rest of the film. As the band explains to a terrified Jennifer exactly why they have to sacrifice her to the devil, it becomes painfully obvious that they are very much amateur Satanists. When you pick up your recipe for human sacrifice off the Internet, you really should expect things to go terribly wrong.
The other clips mostly flesh out scenes that were teased in the trailers or in earlier clips. Again the emphasis is not so much on the gross-out horror, but on the often humorous interchanges between Jennifer and Needy (Amanda Seyfried), whose relationship is the real heart of the movie. See a few of our favorites below.
Posted 9/15/2009 by Bill
Related: Amanda Seyfried | Megan Fox | Jennifer's Body | Diablo Cody
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Monday, September 7
Puzzling over the newfound box-office success of horror flicks with female audiences, the New York Times looks into what's happening with Jennifer's Body. With its theme of demon-assisted vengeance of a woman done wrong, the movie is making a fairly obvious play for the women in the audience. It allows women, as the paper puts it, to "take back the knife."
Beyond that, the movie's creators tell the Times that they set out from the beginning to insert some feminist themes without sabotaging the movie's appeal for 15-year-old boys. By sticking to the tried-and-true genre formula of "screams, skin and death" — and having Megan Fox play Jennifer — an audience of young boys seems pretty much guaranteed. As for the feminists, writer Diablo Cody explains:
The tricky thing is if you're going to subvert [the sex and violence], they have to be there.... We were constantly bobbing and weaving. [Director Karyn Kusama] and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that's appealing to a mainstream audience.
They were, she says, under a lot of pressure to give up the feminist subtext and just make a straight horror film, but ultimately her original script survived more or less intact, Trojan horse and all.
Posted 9/7/2009 by Bill
Related: Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Jennifer's Body | Diablo Cody
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Saturday, September 5
Candles can be romantic ... or they can be satanic. In a new two-minute clip from Jennifer's Body, there's a play of ambiguity until events definitely finish off on the more devilish side for Jennifer's playmate du jour (Kyle Gallner).
It's an extended version of the "playing mommy and daddy" sequence that was included in ET's kiss-and-tell featurette. A little less staccato and more atmospheric in context, the clip shows off the way the movie builds up the tension, and then delivers the inevitable bloody release.
Posted 9/5/2009 by Bill
Related: Megan Fox | Kyle Gallner | Jennifer's Body
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Thursday, September 3
Jennifer's Body isn't just about a demon-possessed girl gobbling up the high school boys. As Jennifer (Megan Fox) informs her friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) at one point in the movie, "I go both ways." At that point it's a real threat. Earlier it's a bit more playful, as Jennifer and Needy play boyfriend-girlfriend and kiss in a scene that has already attracted quite a bit of voyeuristic attention.
ET includes footage of the notorious kiss as part of its behind-the-scenes look at Jennifer's Body. Also included are a few more short scenes, such as Jennifer offering to play mommy and daddy with one ill-fated young boy. We definitely get the sense that Jennifer is a girl who likes to play with her food — and mix a bit of menace into her seductions.
Oh, and one more thing about that kiss: Fox says she was totally comfortable with it, but Seyfried was most definitely not.
Posted 9/3/2009 by Bill
Related: Amanda Seyfried | Megan Fox | Jennifer's Body
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Thursday, August 27
In an interview with IESB, Diablo Cody explains that after penning the sweet, life-affirming Juno, she was ready for darker territory — and more than a bit of horror. In coming up with the script for Jennifer's Body, she was searching around for what really frightened her and found it surprisingly close to home.
I wanted to write something that was about my fears, something that was a little edgy and eerie, but also funny. So I started thinking about what's scary to me, and I decided that girls are scary!
The script didn't end up being about any specific girl she knew, but about taking some of the fear and loathing of everyday teenage life, and making it a bit more graphic — and humorous and entertaining.
I think back-biting is a very accurate term, and in this case, it's literal. This movie is a commentary on girl-on-girl hatred, sexuality, the death of innocence, and also politics in the way the town responds to the tragedies [of the bloody deaths of several young men]. Any person who dares to respond in an unconventional way is branded a traitor. It's also just about fun — I wanted to write a really entertaining popcorn movie.
But Cody wasn't just thinking about girls, Juno director and Jennifer's Body producer Jason Reitman interjected during the interview.
At some point in the process I realized that every type of boy gets it in this film. The jock gets it. The sweet nerd gets it. The Goth kid gets it. This may just be Diablo's revenge on every type of boy she's ever met. If Juno is the film that speaks to her need for love, Jennifer's Body is the film that speaks to her need for revenge.
For another look at how Cody (and Jennifer) satisfied that need, check out the gallery of new photos accompanying the interview.
Posted 8/27/2009 by Bill
Related: Jason Reitman | Juno | Jennifer's Body | Diablo Cody
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Wednesday, August 26
It's not like she needed a whole lot more exposure, but the demonically possessed Megan Fox is back in a new behind-the-scenes video from Jennifer's Body. As the movie's title character, she exhibits an insatiable (and rather messy) appetite for high school boys that ultimately sets her on a collision course with her far-less-glamorous best friend, "Needy" (Amanda Seyfried).
Despite lacking evil superpowers, Needy turns not to be as defenseless as she first appears. The new bits of footage and commentary from the actresses and writer-exec producer Diablo Cody we get here actually end up shedding more light on Needy than on the more flashy (and toothsome) Jennifer. Plus, we get a first peek at the misbegotten sacrifice that sets everything in motion.
Posted 8/26/2009 by reelz
Related: Amanda Seyfried | Megan Fox | Jennifer's Body | Diablo Cody
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Thursday, August 13
No, its not some sort of Nike tie-in for her upcoming movie Jennifer's Body. When Megan Fox says "do it," she's not talking about her shoes.
Her uncensored faux PSA about how to deal with peer pressure goes quite a bit father than that. In it, she urges young girls to take her title character Jennifer as a role model. Given the demon under Jennifer's skin, the advice is just as problematic as you might expect.
Posted 8/13/2009 by Bill
Related: Megan Fox | Jennifer's Body
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Monday, August 3
In an extended interview with Fangoria, filmmakers explained to horror fans just how Jennifer's Body fits into the genre. The movie follows a young beauty who, after a botched satanic sacrifice, ends up possessed by a demon with a real taste for boys.
Although Jennifer's Body follows many of the tropes of classic horror movies, it's the filmmakers' maiden voyage into the genre and really isn't all about the gore. Rather, director Karyn Kusama explains, they are looking to strike the right balance between horror, humor, and character:
... you definitely have to walk a fine line between the loose, comic high school relationship moments and the story's more legitimate suspense and horror elements ... what it all boils down to is finding the right emotional hooks between the characters and finding what feels true to the teenagers.
Producer Daniel Dubiecki adds:
This is really a character movie, a relationship film about these two girls.... They were best friends when they were little kids ... Things have changed between them, and they are going through a dynamic where this friendship is coming to an end.
Of course, the movie serves up plenty of gore as well. For a preview of that side of the movie, just check out the still of Jennifer's leftovers accompanying the article. Because of scenes like this, there will be no PG-13 cut of the film, Dubiecki insists.
Still, Kusama says, they tried to take a more subtle approach with some aspects Jennifer's demon:
When she doesn't feed and grows hungry, she starts to physically deteriorate. But because she's Megan Fox — or because she's the famous Jennifer Check of Devil's Kettle, Minnesota — her version of deteriorating involves just starting to look a little bit more like a lot of girls. [Make-up/prosthetics atrist Greg Nicotero] is really good at helping guide us toward a look that's subtle, but definitely different from how Megan appears when she's looking like a million bucks.... There's just a coolness to it, to me that you can watch this beautiful girl at a stage where sometimes her hair is falling out, or her skin isn't perfectly porcelain, or her eyes are kind of bloodshot, or her teeth get a little dirty.
Definitely a complex and ambitious set of goals, but if they can pull it all off, Jennifer's Body may just turn out to be one demon flick whose beauty is more than skin deep.
Posted 8/3/2009 by Bill
Related: Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Greg Nicotero | Jennifer's Body | Daniel Dubiecki